


mother listen to my heart

by portions_forfox



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: 5 things fic, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-23 12:08:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or: five people steven hyde never fell in love with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mother listen to my heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forcynics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcynics/gifts).



> [](http://cassiehayes.livejournal.com/profile)[**cassiehayes**](http://cassiehayes.livejournal.com/), my dear! look who actually finished this for you, ahhhh! i’m pretty much considering [these](http://portions-forfox.livejournal.com/47054.html) my version of christmas gifts, so, um. merry christmas! basically what you need to know is that this is 100% not-chronological and i 100% messed with canon. as i am wont to do, lol. anyway! here we go!

**ONE.**

He doesn’t remember, really, the shapes on the ceiling like Forman claims he can (“You were _one_ , Eric,” Kitty insists: “You can’t possibly remember that the paint on the ceiling was in the shape of a—a— _you know what_!” Eric insists that he does, and it was.) There was this one time Forman said, “It’s probably ’cause you’re like…not very visually observant,” and Steven pushed out his lips and nodded his head, added simply, “Yeah, or it could be ’cause I didn’t have a crib.” Kelso laughed and Donna rolled her eyes smiling, but those jokes never went over very well with Forman. The ones about, like. Childhood. His parents, or whatever. The lack of them.

Hyde’s mother said to him once (too drunk to even breathe, just bottle after bottle after bottle teetering empty on the three-legged coffee table), “I don’t want you to think that I’m not raising you right because you look like your father,” and spit onto the ground beside the couch where a blood red stain marked the floor from wine spilled a couple weeks ago. “Or because you act like your father,” she said, “or some shit.”

And he hasn’t told Forman this but if he did he’s pretty sure Forman’d say he’s making this up, and that could be because Forman doesn’t think he’s very visually observant or it could be because Forman doesn’t want to think, you know, that there could be a home like this. Or that it could be Hyde’s.

And he hasn’t told Forman this but he swears, he _swears_ that Edna tossed out her bottle with heavy-lidded eyes so it clanged against the rotting wall and rolled across the carpet. “It’s because,” she said, “I don’t have it in me to love you.”

And Mrs. Forman would tell him there’s no way he could possibly know this but he does, he just knows that his mother never held him as a baby.

Steven never learned how to love.

 

 

 

**TWO.**

The first few months at the Formans’ are uncomfortable. To say the least. Every morning he wakes up and Kitty piles a mound of eggs and bacon and pancakes onto his plate, and Eric yawns and slides right down next to him without saying anything, and Red reads the paper and doesn’t look up and Kitty’s chatting on about make sure they remember to bring their house keys today because she’s taking the one under the mat to get replaced, and it takes a minute, Christ, it takes a _month_ for Hyde to realize that means _him_ , him too.

It takes, actually—no. It takes Red coming down to the school for parent-teacher conferences (Kitty made him go, said she’s done it ten goshdarn years in a row and it’s about dang time he finds out what the heck it is Eric’s doing at that school of his), and Hyde plays paper football with Eric while they wait for him to finish, and at the end of it all Red and the bogus English teacher walk to the door and shake hands and then the teacher turns to Hyde and says, “Don’t you have anyone coming, Steven?”

And it’s not—it’s not just, like, a hasty side-comment or a brush-off word, it’s, it’s… Red straightens up and frowns, narrows his eyes, and he says, he goes, “That’s _me_ , dumbass.”

That’s what it takes.

 

 

 

**THREE.**

Donna says it began when they were nine and she tried to get Eric to wrestle in the driveway, only he couldn’t because his arms were like pool noodles said his dad, and besides, every time he tried Donna only ended up shoving his face into a pile of dirt until he called uncle, and his mom said _no more scratches on my baby’s knees_ so no thank you, Donna, not this time.

And that’s when Hyde shrugged (already he’d mastered the art of Zen; not even in the double digits yet and he’s a virtual Lou Reed) and he said, “I’ll wrestle you.” And Eric watched from the porch while nobody won. Or they both did. Either way, Hyde came back smiling, and Hyde never smiled.

 

When they’re older, it’s Donna’s long pale legs stretched out beneath the table, her leaned-back shoulders and her angled grin, and she says, she says “Remember when we used to wrestle in the front yard?”

“I remember it a lot, actually,” says Hyde. “Like, twice a day,” and she punches him in the shoulder, laugh folding out from her lips. He kind of got that shoulder-punch thing from her. Uses it on Kelso all the time now.

“I was just thinking,” she starts to say, biting her lip and puffing out a breath of air that lifts up the fringe on her forehead, red-gold wisps in smoke, “Eric never like, _got_ that as a kid.”

Hyde frowns beneath his sunglasses, crosses his arms and stretches out his legs to where his toes are barely brushing hers underneath their shoes and socks. “He never got what?” he asks her.

“ _Wrestling_ , dummy,” she offers (and she’s ignoring, she’s ignoring his feet touching hers, and she’s not, she’s not moving away). “I mean he never understood the need to just _fight_ , you know? Like where you get so angry or so frustrated or so—so—I don’t know… _sad_ you just physically need to grapple with that. Get dirty, bloody…you know. Torn up.” She sighs and shifts her feet so they’re pressed against his lower calves without even looking at him. “I liked that as a kid,” she says, tips back the neck of her beer bottle with ease, brings it down and adds casually, “We liked that.” Tilts her head, smiles at him.

And Hyde thinks: _fuck_. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

 

It’s not like it’s a secret, really, that Forman loved Donna. What was a secret was that Hyde did.

 

 

 

**FOUR.**

He still maintains that it was Jackie who initiated it.

(“Steven,” she says, “you were like— _way_ hornier than me. This was totally your fault.”

“It’s a fault all right,” he grunts, “I can tell you that.” She pouts. He groans and kisses her.)

There was _The Price Is Right_ on Monday, and then again on Tuesday, and on Wednesday it was just _The Price Is Right_ again, and on Thursday there remained, yeah, only _The Price Is Right_.

On Friday there was still _The Price Is Right_.

But also on Friday there was suddenly a room full of _bodies_ , two live bodies that took up a million spaces in tongues that reached out to lap at chapped swollen bottom lips, velvet inside gums coating white sharp teeth, the sweat on the crease of their elbows and the backs of their knees and necks, the tight denim square around Hyde’s groin and Jackie’s small tits straining at the thin cotton t-shirt, and there were hands. His, big. Hers, tiny.

 _God_ , they were beautiful that day.

 

Jackie gets inside you like a poison, man. You can’t really get her out.

 

 

 

**FIVE.**

On a Wednesday Hyde cuts class and heads home early, digs an old pack of cigarettes out of his cramped front pocket even though he doesn’t like Forman to see him smoking them. Pot, it’s whatever, it’s for happy people. Cigarettes are for the sad.

But Eric chases after him on the sidewalk all laughing and grinning and so young and naïve and so fucking unready to deal with everything Hyde’s got on his back, and he’s all, “So where we going, man?” and then his eyes catch the cigarette and he’s like, “Woah man, you do that now?” kinda weirded out, and Hyde goes, “They’re my mom’s. She left them.” He stops, adds, “Along with everything else. Myself included,” and starts walking again.

Eric stays frozen for a minute, and for a second Hyde thinks he’ll get to go home in peace, maybe for fucking once he’ll be left alone. (Except—not for fucking once. This isn’t an anomaly.)

But Eric catches up and his skinny little chicken legs stumble over each other trying to walk backward in front of Hyde. He goes, “Woah woah woah,” and puts up his hands. “What do you mean, she left you?”

“I mean,” Hyde says, annoyed, condescending, “ _she left me_.”

“Like, _left_ you left you?”

“Yeah man.”

Eric bites his lip and stops. Hyde stops too, isn’t sure why. The cigarette is scratching at his lungs. “So you’re all alone in that house?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you still have food?”

“Yeah, for now.”

“But you’ll run out.”

“No,” says Hyde, “I have a fucking Kroger’s in the backyard. _Yes_ , I’ll run out.”

Eric puts his hands on his hips, this intrinsically effeminate gesture Hyde’s always making fun of him for. He doesn’t this time.

“Man,” Eric decides. “Fuck, man.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean…” He shakes his head, blows out his cheeks. “Fuck, man.”

“Yeah.” Hyde sticks the cigarette back in his mouth and starts walking, the school fading out behind him.

Eric catches up again. “So when’re you gonna bring your stuff over?” he wonders, bright voice.

“What the hell, man?”

“Your stuff,” says Eric. “You’re moving in, right?” And looks at him with these big round eyes, this totally unfazed, expectant face, and he probably wants to say more, they probably both do. Whatever. Zen. Doe eyes, effeminate gestures. It’s Eric.

Hyde picks the Marlboro out from between his teeth and drops it on the ground, crushes it into the sidewalk with the toe of his shoe. He looks up at Eric. “Right,” he says.  



End file.
